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Some wits have remarked that English poets of the twentieth century had plenty to be pessimistic
about , not least the truth of Arnold Bennett’s suggestion that in the
English-speaking countries the word ‘poetry’ would disperse a crowd quicker than a fire-hose.
Their verses achieved the arduous task of making modern life seem even more dispiriting than it
actually is. The patriarch of this tendency was that vindictive old classical
scholar and sometime poet , A.E. Housman (1859-1936). In theme and
structure , his stanzas often
resemble the lyrics from some traditional ‘folk’ ballad :
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows :
What are those blue remembered hills ,
What spires , what farms are those ?
That is the land of lost content ,
I see it shining plain ,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
By the second half of the twentieth century , the baton of disenchanted verse had passed to the
balding , bespectacled Philip Larkin (1922-1985). His was an
uneventful life. When he was a student at Oxford during the second world war , he helped to host
George
Orwell speaking on the topic of Literature and Totalitarianism. The dinner afterwards was at a
‘not-so-good hotel , whereas Dylan Thomas had previously been more
expensively entertained. Larkin later observed that ‘It was my first essay in practical
criticism.’ After
university he took a sequence of librarian jobs before finishing up in Hull where he grew fat ,
wrote and drank , became frail and died. No war experience , no marriage ,
no children. His poems are replete with the small dramas and frustrations of the majority of lives
but art is about so much more than just the life of its author. Here are
the first and final verses from his uncollected poem Aubade(1) :
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify....
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
(1) This suggests a dawn or morning love-song. Its also the brand name of a
lingerie collection.
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Archive
Poets' Corner #1 – Poetic
Pessimism, 13th September 2012
Poets' Corner #2 – The Workman's
Friend, 10th October 2012
Poets' Corner #3 – On The Trail of
Two Dylans, 12th November 2012
Poets' Corner #4 – Omar Khayyam,
14th December 2012
Poets' Corner #5 – William Blake,
25th January 2013
Poets' Corner #6 – A Minor Poet,
19th February 2013
Poets' Corner #7 – Thomas Hardy,
20th March 2013
Poets' Corner #8 – Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 21st April 2013
Poets' Corner #9 – Edward Thomas,
20th May 2013
Poets' Corner #10 – Harry Smith's
Anthology, 19th June 2013
Poets' Corner #11 – William
Plomer, 21st July 2013
Poets' Corner #12 – Ghosts ,
20th August 2013
Poets' Corner #13 – William
Dunbar, 20th September 2013
Poets' Corner #14 – Bathtub
Thoughts, 20th October 2013
Poets' Corner #15 – Bagpipe Music,
20th November 2013
Poets' Corner #16 – Sylvia &
Emily, 20th December 2013
Poets' Corner #17 – The Fall Of
Icarus, 16th January 2014
Poets' Corner #18 – Those Gone
Before, 20th February 2014
Poets' Corner #19 – Rudyard
Kipling, 20th March 2014
Poets' Corner #20 – Martin Bell,
20th April 2014
Poets' Corner #21 – Another Modest
Proposal, 20th May 2014
Poets' Corner #22 – Thomas Gray
and The Eighteenth Century, 20th June 2014
Poets' Corner #23 – Edgar Allan
Poe, 18th July 2014
Poets' Corner #24 – Tread Softly,
19th August 2014
Poets' Corner #25 – Mad To Be
Saved, 24th December 2015
Poets' Corner #26 – Wants,
20th January 2016
Poets' Corner #27 – Samuel
Johnson, 15th February 2016
Poets' Corner #28 – T.S.Eliot,
10th March 2016
Poets' Corner #29 – Alfred Lord
Tennyson, 18th April 2016
Poets' Corner #30 – Leonard Cohen,
12th November 2016
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